BDPROTO: A Database of Phonological Inventories from Ancient and Reconstructed Languages

Abstract

Here we present BDPROTO, a database comprised of phonological inventory data from 137 ancient and reconstructed languages. These data were extracted from historical linguistic reconstructions and brought together into a single unified, normalized, accessible, and Unicode-compliant language resource. This dataset is publicly available and we aim to engage language scientists doing research on language change and language evolution. We provide a short case study to highlight BDPROTO's research viability; using phylogenetic comparative methods and high-resolution language family trees, we investigate whether consonantal and vocalic systems differ in their rates of change over the last 10,000 years.

Resources

Details